EPISODE 386: Marketing to the Active Care Patient

Hey, chiropractors. We're ready for another Modern Chiropractic Marketing Show with Dr. Kevin Christie, where we discuss the latest in marketing strategies, contact marketing, direct response marketing, and business development with some of the leading experts in the industry.

Dr. Kevin Christie: [00:00:00] Welcome to another episode of Modern Chiropractic Mastery. This is your host, Dr. Kevin Christie. And today I'm bringing a solo episode for you. And this is marketing to the active care patient. And I want you to kind of think about it more as communicating with the active care patient. Patient, and that's typically what marketing is, especially when you're doing ethical, elegant marketing, content marketing, education based marketing.

It's going to be all about communication and you know, there's three phases, uh, to a patient life cycle. There's the new patient. Right? That's part one. Two is the active care patient. And three is the inactive care patient. You should be doing marketing for all three phases of that patient life cycle. Uh, but today we're going to dive into, uh, the active patient, right?

That active care patient and give you some ideas to communicate well with them. And the reason why you want to do this, [00:01:00] honestly, is is it all comes down to patient outcomes. Everything is about patient outcomes, especially for the evidence based chiropractors. You know, we, we want to be patient centered, but the reality of it is, is, You know, we can be patient centered.

We can be outcomes driven and do it in a way that, yeah, it helps our practice. It helps it grow. It helps it thrive. It helps it, um, you know, have profit margins that you can reinvest in yourself and in your team and in your patients and ultimately provide a great experience. It's okay to make decisions that are both patient centered and.

good business decisions and good strategy, uh, to have a healthy practice. And I think this phase of the patient life cycle, uh, goes unnoticed. Sometimes, you know, we think a lot about new patient marketing and we think about reactivations and that's kind of that phase one and three that I mentioned.

Right? So new [00:02:00] patient and inactive patient, we, you know, we hear a lot of people talk about reactivations and those are all. great. But this active care patient, this, uh, this stretch of time with your patient goes on notice from a, um, let's just call it, you know, communication and marketing standpoint. And, uh, you know, the active care patient is obviously from when they come into your office for the initial exam, uh, all the way until they are discharged from care.

Even if you put them on a performance or a maintenance care, um, that's fine. That's going to be after the They're the active care. And so we're going to define it as from first visit to discharge from care as the active, uh, care patient. And what's going to happen is if you do effective content, education, marketing, whatever you want to call it for that patient, three things are going to happen.

You're going to increase the adherence. The patient adherence to that treatment plan, which is frankly going to, [00:03:00] uh, optimize their patient outcomes, right? A lot of times patient outcomes suffer because you have a leak in the bucket and patients are not adhering to a, uh, a standard of care, uh, that is, that is good for them.

And so you're having outcome issues there. The second thing it's going to do is they will potentially utilize more services that you believe in, right? Services that are going to help. them. It might be services, it might be products, right? And that's fine. You shouldn't be shy about having add on services.

Uh, that are going to help your patients. And then third, it's going to actually help you get more referrals. The way it gets more referrals is the fact that a patient refers people to you at the most opportune time for them to do that is during their active care plan with you, right? Like if they're with you for a month, that is the most likely.

referral time period that they're going to send friends, family and colleague [00:04:00] members, uh, to your practice. And so if you do a great job of educating your patient during that period of time, there's going to be a higher chance that they refer more, you know, if they get an email from you and they're like, Oh, I didn't know you treated.

TMD, TMJ, they probably don't know what TMD is, right? But, uh, or plantar fasciitis, if you're giving them like information on some of the things that you treat, they're going to know how to refer to you. So those are the three things that really good, uh, communication and marketing to the active care patient does.

One is increase patient adherence. Two is increase, Utilization of services and you're going to get more referrals, right? And, and that's a, that's just a key aspect of building a sustainable and thriving practice that has different, um, you know, different peaks and valleys. And we want to really, um, get the peaks higher in the valleys higher as well.

not lower. Uh, so we, we want to [00:05:00] make sure we smooth out that a little. And the patient adherence, I think, is, is one of the biggest things chiropractors struggle with. And it really impacts your, um, your outcomes, like I mentioned, and it just impacts your business too. And there's a handful of things of, of why a patient prematurely falls off.

It could be financial, right? Um, Um, if you have higher prices, if you're at a network, um, probably going to happen more often to you than if you are in network with all the insurances or, um, you know, your, your particular state has lower co pays and lower deductibles. So, you know, finance is definitely a part of that.

Um, maybe, uh, they, there's a time issue, uh, maybe you're too busy and there's not enough availability for them. Uh, there's a lot of things you got to look at from that perspective as well. Um, maybe they're not getting better after, [00:06:00] you know, they gave you three or four visits and they're not better and they weren't, uh, properly, um, educated on what their low back condition was going to be like.

And so maybe that happens, or sometimes. They actually feel better. Um, they get better pain wise, but maybe they're not better function wise. And you got to be able to explain that to them. Maybe they're not just, they're just not bought into what the experience is or the guidance you're giving them. And those are the things that you really have to make sure your communication is on point to, to really improve this.

Okay. So I want to, dive into seven things that you could improve on or do, um, to communicate with that patient. And this is more about really educating them. There's other ways of communicating, obviously, like a, you know, an appointment reminder text is a way of communicating, but that's not necessarily marketing.

That's a good thing to [00:07:00] do, but I'm not going to dive into that type of stuff as procedural. Okay. So the first thing is, is your report of findings. Um, you gotta have a great report of findings. And, um, I think a lot of chiropractors struggle with that. We actually just did our, one of our big coaching calls here, uh, this week on report of findings and, you know, how we story branded asking the dance, all that are factor question at the history, uh, having confidence in what you're Uh, providing them, we go over the clinical compass evidence based guidelines for treatment frequency and duration, a lot of things that we have a very nice step by step approach for a report of findings that isn't.

Um, brow beating anybody. We're not having this big dog and pony show. You don't have to bring the entire family to report a findings. It's actually just being a really good doctor and having great communication with them and having an effective way of talking to them and giving them the particular information they need to feel good about the guidance that you're giving them and [00:08:00] the leadership that you're providing for them.

And so, uh, you gotta get really good on your report of findings and do it. I mean, it takes us like three to five minutes. And it's a nice dialogue. It's not drinking water out of a fire hydrant. It's not 25 minutes, and it's not a sales job. And so, um, report of findings is a big one. So that's number one.

We, we, we work with our clients a lot on the findings and especially if you have associates that need to, you know, Improve on that. We do a lot with that as well. Uh, number two is consider a really nice new patient packet for your, for your new patients, right? Um, have information on there. Some of the other services you do.

Uh, if you have something like Cairo up, I recommend putting the condition report in there. It doesn't have to be this huge, big thing, but it could be a nice little. Packet or folder with pertinent information. If you offer things, things like shockwave or laser, whatever, have information about there. Um, we also give out, we have those healthy info cards, which actually you can get for [00:09:00] free on our website, go to modern chiropractic marketing.

com. Um, there's a resources tab and you'll see healthy info cards. We have micro break cards, desk ergonomics, cards, carpal tunnel stretching. So basically it's for the desk worker. We also have certain things on there, like the. Core exercise card and you can actually download that it's PSD files and send it to your graphic designer.

and you can rebrand it and put your clinic information on it. And we print it out on these really nice card stock. And so we give that to our new patients, the pertinent ones. I think we have five on there. And so we pick whatever ones that, um, make sense for that patient and give that to them. So consider a nice little new patient packet.

With some good educational materials in there,

the next one we do is I use an app called Bonjoro and it's, uh, it's 25 a month. It's free at first, and you get to a certain point, then it's 25 a month. And, uh, basically it's a video [00:10:00] app. It does other things, but what I do is, uh, we get a new patient and then that next morning, I will, uh, shoot a quick video.

It's just me holding my cell phone up, kind of like selfie style. And for like 30 seconds, like, Hey, John, this is Dr. Christy. It was a pleasure meeting you yesterday. Um, we're looking forward to get you back to playing some golf. Uh, don't worry if you're a little sore, that can happen sometimes. Uh, not, not a big deal, uh, to be glad it'll go away.

Make sure you do the. The stretches we gave you and we look forward to seeing on your next visit. Right? So it's a personalized little video. And then what happens is from the app, you actually, it emails to them, but when they open up the email, it's, it's a nice video that's embedded into the body of the email, like a thumbnail and they can click it and watch it right in the email, right in the email.

So it's not like an attachment and it's just a nice thing. It's kind of in lieu of calling your new patients and seeing how they're doing. That's fine too. That's really good. A lot of people obviously just go right to voicemail, but you can leave a voicemail. Uh, but this is my way [00:11:00] of doing it to where, honestly, I just don't want to necessarily get on the phone and have phone conversations with all the new patients, uh, but there's nothing wrong with that.

Uh, but the bonjour has been a really nice touch and we get a lot of great feedback from there. And that's one of those touch points. That's, um, I think it's important. I wouldn't necessarily call it. Uh, you know, it's not a ton of content education, but I do try to put something in there where I want to reiterate, like, don't worry if you're sore or don't worry if the pain doesn't go away or whatever it is like to something that might cement for them, like, okay, I'm, I'm in the right place.

And so that is spelled B O N J O R. So bonjoro.

Next is an email onboarding sequence. My first caveat to this is if you get a new patient that signs up your practice and they get a slew of emails with paperwork, and then they're getting email reminders for the appointment and they're getting text messages, [00:12:00] you may want to avoid this. You want to audit how much communication they're getting before they even come in or that first, um, you know, few weeks of care, but you could do a nice email onboarding sequence.

We have one. And it's, uh, four emails and it drips after like they, they've come in the practice, they've, they've been in one time, their email gets sent in. And then from there, uh, they will get a welcome email. And then the second email will be about, um, a lot of the low back conditions we treat. Then the third email will be a lot about the neck conditions we treat, even though we treat a lot of stuff.

Those are main things. And then the fourth email is actually an email of some of the other services we have. So we're educating them on some of the main conditions we have and then obviously some of the services and so you could do an email onboarding sequence with MailChimp. Uh, if you're a member of our Chiropractic Success Academy, we have a lesson in there on that.

Uh, but MailChimp, if you have or whatever you use, we'll walk you through and help you out.[00:13:00]

Fifth, I think is a nice new patient tour. All right. Again, if you have cool services, maybe you have a clinic gym hybrid or you have shockwave or laser or dry kneeling or a stretching person, whatever, there's a lot of things you may have. Um. Yeah. Yeah. Um. Give a nice tour, especially if you're proud of your office, do a new patient tour, make sure you show them the different opportunities they have in your practice as far as health, maybe a functional medicine doctor or some integrated medicine, whatever it may be, heck, even if you ran out, you know, to like, we ran out to a physical therapy group and we have a massage therapist.

And so we will mention them in our tour. And so consider a new patient tour that is not overly done, but nice and gives them a little walkthrough of what to expect and then some of the services, uh, you have. And so consider a, a new patient tour. Um, the next thing that I really, I like doing is we send a welcome letter to our new patients and we have kind of a template through there.[00:14:00]

Again, we coach our clients on this, how to have a tailored but templated welcome letter. And so we are, yeah, I'm sending them a Bonjoro video. And then they're getting a letter a few days later in a mail. We're, we're really welcoming to our practice and we're communicating with them and we want them to feel like, you know, they're in the right place and they're getting a, a remarkable experience.

So consider that. That, um, welcome matter letter in the physical mail. So mail it to them. And then lastly is there's a lot of opportunities to send your patients videos or blogs that you've done as content, right? And so some of the examples I give for this is if a patient asked me about mattresses, we have a whole mattress buying guide on our blog.

So I'll go over to my computer. I'll snag that from our website and I'll email it right to them through our EHR system directly. Um, or, you know, you get a runner and they, I asked them if they do a pre run warmup and they don't. So I walk over to our YouTube channel, get the link to [00:15:00] a pre run warmup we did and email it to them right through the EHR system.

Another one is, um, is, uh, People with low back pain and they got an air travel coming up. We wrote a blog on how to travel via plane. When you have back pain, I'll go over and I'll email it to them. So you can use the content you have to educate them during their active care patient, uh, experience. And that way it helps educate them.

And it's a great opportunity to improve their outcomes. And so just to, you know, Reiterate, you got seven and I'm sure there's more, but I'm just going to start with these seven. Make sure your report of findings is on point. Consider a new patient packet. Look into Bonjoro. Email onboarding sequence could be done by your email platform, not your EHR.

New patient tours can be really nice. Welcome letter in the physical mail, in the mailbox. I know it's hard for you to believe that sometimes you can send mail in a mailbox and then lastly educating your [00:16:00] patient through your videos and blogs that you have done and that will be a really good, um, you know, it's just a comprehensive strategy to get education and communication to your patient during that active care period.

Phase, which again is from new patient to doctor discharge. I hope that helps. Um, we'll probably do some other solo episodes where we tackle a little bit of new patient cycle and then also inactive patients have a great rest of the week. Talk to you soon.